A 56-year-old homeless man who slept under a railroad trestle faces animal cruelty charges for locking four pit bulls in a self-storage unit without food or water.

Investigators say Frank Burns was evicted from his Schenectady apartment just before Christmas and tried to surrender his dogs to a shelter but was told there wasn’t room. So he put them in a storage unit in Rotterdam while he slept under a trestle nearby.

Schenectady County SPCA enforcement officer Matthew Tully says animal control officers had no choice but to charge Burns because the animals wouldn’t have qualified for emergency placement without an official case.

Investigators say Burns is headed to Florida and they likely won’t work to extradite him for prosecution.